CONTEMPORARY PERSONALITIES
I
The Right Hon. Andrew Bonar Law
MR. ANDREW BONAR LAW was born in-New Brunswick in the year 18583 so that he is now sixty-four years old.1 He was educated at the Gilbert Field School, Hamilton, New Brunswick, and at the High School, Glasgow. He obtained employment in the office of a firm of iron merchants in the City of Glasgow, and was so successful that in 1900 he was able to withdraw with a sufficient competence. cAnd in his case such a withdrawal meant a comfortable competence, for there never lived a Scotsman who was more indifferent to money for its own sake; or more generous for himself, or his friends in his own expenditure.
Business activities did not consume all the young man's time. He was reckoned a good player, according to the standard of those days, at the local lawn tennis club ; and in those societies which devoted themselves to literature and debate he was a regular and extremely promising recruit. Carlyle was his early hero, as he has been to so many men who nave afterwards become prominent in the State. At this period indeed Carlyle was the guiding star of most aspiring young men. While recognising his remarkable qualities I have myself always been
1 This article was written some months before Mr. Bonar Law's death.
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